The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for machining a web-shaped workpiece into a plurality of products, and an apparatus for processing scrap produced from such a web-shaped workpiece.
Generally, machining processes of automatically manufacturing various products from web-shaped workpieces are widely carried out in factories. For example, such a machining process is employed to manufacture caps to be crimped on both ends of film cartridges which have stored photographic films, 35 mm wide, wound around spools, in a film packaging process.
Specifically, a web-shaped workpiece in the form of a thin metal sheet is inserted into a cap manufacturing apparatus, which is operated while the web-shaped workpiece is being intermittently fed by feed units such as nip rollers. The cap manufacturing apparatus automatically machines the web-shaped workpiece into caps to be crimped on both sides of cartridges.
When caps are manufactured from the web-shaped workpiece, different shapes of unwanted scrap are produced. For example, when pilot holes and burred holes are perforated in the web-shaped workpiece, circular scrap pieces of different diameters are punched out of the web-shaped workpiece. After caps have been manufactured, the web-shaped workpiece is cut off into certain lengths as scrap coils.
Since the various types of scrap and the caps are discharged together from the processing machine, it is a considerably complex task to sort out and collect only the caps. The caps are manually sorted out and collected, and hence cannot efficiently and automatically be obtained.
The film packaging process also employs a barrel plate manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing barrel plates by bending a thin metal sheet. When barrel plates are manufactured from a thin metal sheet, various pieces of scrap and defective barrel plates are also produced. The barrel plate manufacturing apparatus is combined with an apparatus for processing such various pieces of scrap. The cap manufacturing apparatus is also associated with an apparatus for processing various pieces of scrap produced when caps are manufactured.
Since both the barrel plate manufacturing apparatus and the cap manufacturing apparatus are associated with respective scrap processing apparatus, the entire facility is large in size and entails a large amount of cost. These problems manifest themselves particularly when a plurality of barrel plate manufacturing apparatus and a plurality of cap manufacturing apparatus are installed for mass-producing cartridges.
It is a general object of the present invention to provide a method of and an apparatus for machining a web-shaped workpiece to manufacture various products efficiently and quickly from the web-shaped workpiece.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for efficiently processing various pieces of scrap produced from various machining apparatus while effectively simplifying and reducing the size of the entire facility including those apparatus.